


Thundershower

by ancestrallizard



Category: Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei Series
Genre: F/M, Gen, features inadvisable storm behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-10 23:10:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12309855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancestrallizard/pseuds/ancestrallizard
Summary: Yuka has always been drawn to storms.





	Thundershower

Pale light flashed faster than thought behind the clouds. The scarred terrain of worn down concrete, grass, and saplings blown about haphazardly from the wind and rain, was thrown into stark relief for less than a moment before the evening dusk rushed back in to shadow it again. 

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 – 

Distant thunder rolled over itself in a wave, content as a cat’s purr and audible even over the deluge. Yuka scrubbed the rain from her eyes and started to count again.

She wasn’t in the worst place to wait out the rapidly intensifying storm, standing mostly under the crumble awning of their temporary shelter. Kazuya had been the first to spot it earlier that evening when the first bands of rain started to fall, a worn down shell of what might have been a store in years past. The front windows were grimy and cracked, but the walls and door were more or less whole, and it showed signs of recent habitation – there was a mattress in the corner, a lamp, clothes, spoiled food, crates with supplies and medicine, even an small battered looking television. Yuka had a gut feeling the recent absence of the previous inhabitant had something to do with the bones they’d seen a nest of Pabilsag picking over not a day before reaching the place.

Possibly haunted or not, it was safe for the moment. Kazuya had gone to the mattresses to dry off the COMP, and Yuka waited outside for the storm to start.

She didn’t wait long. Rain fell in bullets and churned the earth into a bubbling sludge as the wind blew taller plants nearly perpendicular to the ground. A bolt of white snapped across the blackened sky, and an elongated, grating roar like sheet metal collapsing follow 6 seconds after it. Flares of lightning danced in the distance, too weak and indecisive to become true lightning bolts. The sparks were alien to her own zio spells but comforting all the same, like hearing a favorite song in another language. An unnamable energy infused the air until it was almost bursting with it, undampeded by the rain and unmoved by the wind. It reverberated through Yuka’s blood and bones until it drummed in sync with her heart and made standing still in the relative safety that much more difficult.

There was a rumor, sworn on by wide-eyed young people in bars and arcades who didn’t know any better, and a few people old enough to definitely know better, that you could catch lightning. That someone familiar enough with zio spells could catch and channel a lightning strike through their body and into their magic and give them abilities beyond what humans were normally capable of. Yuka knew pulling a stunt like that would just kill a person outright, or leave them a burnt out wreck if they were lucky.

But with the beating heart of the storm so close that the thunder almost deafened, with the wind and water tearing at her skin and hair trying in vain to knock her down, with the scent of the rain soaked earth and air flooding through her nose and brain, it was hard to remember common sense. 

It was a fishing hook lodged in her sternum, pulled taught between her and the storm. She could meet it head on, tear down the lightning from the sky with all the ease of picking an apple if she just stepped out and tried…

In a lull between clashes of thunder, Kazuya sneezed. Yuka blinked, attention thrown. He hadn’t said anything earlier about feeling unwell, but his old wounds from the Cathedral could flare up at inopportune times, and a cold would make them worse. As if thinking of one summoned the other, the seamlike scar on her abdomen twinged with a dull pain, joining the sting of the rain on her face and arms. Yuka pried her feet up from the drowned grass and dirt, finally cognizant of how they ached after miles of travel, and returned to the shelter. 

The dusty lamp doused the room in weak yellow light, hardly more than a candle compared to to the hard storm light that filtered in through the grimy windows. Aside from a small leak in the roof, it was completely whole, a rarity this far from civilization. Yuka shuffled towards the light as the chill on her skin grew into real, bone freezing cold. Thunder cracked like a whip, loud but not as loud as her chattering teeth. She stopped at her pack on the wall, alongside her and Kazuya’s armor, and changed into a dry set of clothes, tossing the thoroughly soaked one away in a pile – they were beyond the point of drying out over night. 

She collapsed on the mattress beside Kazuya. The rain drummed threateningly on the roof as thunder rolled and crashed again, more distant than before. The relative dryness of the new clothes wasn’t enough to warm her icy skin or unstick damp hair from the back of her neck. 

Yuka’s peripheral vision was severed by a blue, soft cloth that settled around her ears and the nape of her neck. Kazuya patted the top of her head to make sure the towel stayed in place, then pulled a larger one from his pack and carefully draped it around her shoulders. Despite a slight tremor, she kept a deathgrip on the threadbare blanket, pulling it tight around herself as she leaned into Kazuya’s side to steal away some of his body heat. He’d tried to turn on the T.V., but it was broken past repair and only produced static that droned in tandem with the rain. 

She was worn down from cold, hunger, and physical exertion, but vestiges of the storm still sparked impatiently under her skin. She wanted to run, even though her legs felt like they were going to fall off and her side ached like she’d been stabbed days ago instead of years. Yuka blinked, eyes bleary from the light or water or both, and poked Kazuya’s shoulder with a still shaking hand. “Fight me.” 

He looked at her, grey eye focused in consideration, then kissed her lightly. “Tomorrow.”

“Mm.” The thunder was barely a whisper now, and the rain was following suit. The press of their bodies together was finally chasing away the cold. Yuka’s eyes were falling shut as if weighed by lead. “How’s your leg?”

He shifted very slightly, trying not to jostle her, and his breath hitched almost imperceptibly. “Not that bad. How’s you side?”

“Not that bad.” It was probably a good thing the storm hit when it did, or else they might have tried to push on and ignore both their hurts. Dia spells never helped with old, poorly healed injuries. Her free hand curled into a fist.

“Why do you like storms so much?” Yuka felt his question as much as heard it, a murmur above her head as well as a soft vibration in her cheek and jaw. 

She mulled it over as the last of the rain petered out. The exhilaration, terror and joy she’d felt not a half hour earlier was now a distant, shifting mirage. “Power.” She said eventually, heavy tongue complicating the task of putting words to the feeling. The chance, as slim as it was, to shape destiny, hers and his. Or maybe it was just stubbornness, daring fate to deal out one more unfair hand after everything it put them through “Does that make sense?” 

“Not really.” He hugged her closer. Yuka tried to return the gesture, but poor muscle coordination borne from cold meant she more or less knocked him down so they were both flat-out on the old mattress. He gave a muffled grunt of surprise from her elbow in his side, and the mild impact sent another stitch of pain though her midsection. She rolled off of him to avoid inadvertently hurting either of them again, though she stayed close. The air was cool enough, and Yuka cold enough, that they wouldn’t get uncomfortably warm anytime soon. The final cracks of thunder yawned far in the distance, so soft it was almost imaginary, as the rain beat a dying uneven rhythm against the roof.

He muttered, almost inaudibly, “Thank you for coming back.” 

Of course I came back, she wanted to say, but exhaustion stopped the reply before it could finish the journey from her brain to her mouth. Instead, she held his hand, and he traced an old raised burn over her knuckles with his thumb. They lay together and waited for the weather to clear, her body and the sky both momentarily, mercifully quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> seriously don't stand in thunderstorms 
> 
> i talk about smt sometimes on my blog though its mostly just memes: ancestrallizard.tumblr.com


End file.
